rabies
by cedricsowner
Summary: Rabies is one of the most horrible diseases in the world. Unless you catch its progression with immediate post bite shots, you're beyond rescue. What if Megan wasn't fast enough to save Tommy? SPOILERS for EP7SE3. FINAL CHAPTER UP NOW!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

Tommy reached for his gun. One smooth motion, refined to perfection in twenty years of being a cop.

This time around, however, his hand found nothing but an empty holster.

He was unarmed.

What had happened to his gun? Had he left it somewhere? Lost it?

He honestly couldn't remember.

Truth to be told he couldn't remember anything. His head was hurting. So did his knees. Looking down he noticed that his clothes were dirty and torn in places.

But how he had gotten into that state – or ended up in the middle of what seemed to be a vast forest in the dead of night – was a complete mystery to him.

Dim moonlight was seeping through the treetops, but the undergrowth was immensely dark, of a blackness that looked almost surreal. Every few steps Tommy stumbled, over thick roots and stones half buried in the ground.

Where was he? Where the hell was he?

The forest's silence was suffocating. It was so completely devoid of all noise, Tommy started wondering if something was wrong with his hearing. He checked his jacket's pockets for his cell phone, but of course, just like his gun, it was inexplicably absent.

What was the last thing he could remember? He had attended the Flyer's game with Riley. Afterwards they had had drinks… a bit of nice conversation… yeah, there had been some accidental brushing of fingertips, too, and he had touched her back while leading her out of the bar… she was funny, kind hearted and good looking…

Tommy stopped and rubbed his temples vigorously, despite the growing pain that seemed to threaten to split his skull apart. If he remembered correctly they had somehow ended up talking about food stuff they liked and she had offered to cook homemade lasagna for him…

Of course he had told her he loved lasagna. Tommy started walking again.

Megan loved lasagna, too. One evening he had taken her out to that fancy restaurant, way overrunning his budget… but hell, they had had…

OUCH

His foot must have gotten caught in some intertwined tree roots. He crashed to the ground like a ton of bricks, grazing his hands, but that wasn't the worst: Searing pain shot up from his left ankle right up to his knee. Groaning, Tommy reached out to free his foot.

Suddenly the world turned pitch black. It was as if someone had flipped a light switch in a room without windows. Complete darkness. Maybe a cloud was obscuring the moon? Cursing, Tommy groped around on the ground to disentangle himself from the damned tree.

What had happened after they had left the bar? He had brought Riley home, made sure she got to her doorstep safe and dry… she had thanked him for the evening… repeated her invitation to the homemade lasagna again… he had assured her he'd love to taste it. On his way back to the car he had contemplated calling Megan under some pretense, with the vague idea to drop a hint or two on what a great evening he had had…

Hang on a sec… Tommy froze. Some strange sound had just disturbed the forest's oppressive silence. Just a tiny little noise, brief as a pin's drop, so quickly come and gone that he wondered if he had imagined it – no.

There it was again.

A soft rustling.

Something was stirring in the undergrowth.

Well, this was a forest, probably lots and lots of animals lived here – rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, all kinds of birds…

RUSTLE.

Okay, whatever it was, it was definitely a lot bigger than a raccoon. Tommy reached for his gun again, but of course his holster was still empty. What the hell had he done with his weapon?

The roots of the tree were extremely solid. He pulled at them with all his might, but they barely moved an inch. It was as if the roots were deliberately clinging to him, holding him trapped like some sort of old-fashioned shackle.

Maybe it was just his nerves, but the rustling in the undergrowth seemed to be getting louder and closer. Tommy vehemently jerked his foot backwards, lost balance, flopped on his ass, hit his tailbone on another stone but yes, finally it came loose. His shoe, however, was still stuck between the roots.

Great, just great.

Only now, with his foot clad in nothing but a sock, Tommy noticed how immensely cold it was. His fingers were growing stiffer by the minute and uncomfortable moistness began making his clothes clammy. Was that mist, closing in on him? He started groping around again to retrieve the shoe.

What had happened after he had brought Riley home? He saw himself walking towards his car, fumbling with his keys… and then nothing. A black hole. A blank gap. Maybe someone had kidnapped him? With the help of a tazer maybe? And then drugged him? It would explain the memory lapse, the missing gun and cell, the state of his clothes, his disorientation… maybe he had somehow managed to get away.

So he was on the run.

Someone was probably after him.

He should get away from here. Fast.

But where to? Which direction had he come from? As far as he could tell he was lost in a giant wood. If only the moon was visible again, but the clouds seemed to have completely swallowed it up…

GAAAAH

A scream escaped Tommy before he could help it. Giant yellow eyes were suddenly glowing at him from the undergrowth, maybe an arm's length or two away. He scrambled to his feet and started running, thorns and stones piercing through the unprotected sole of his left foot.

It almost felt like he was back on the football field, in his college days, with the other team's players tackling him left and right, only that he kept colliding with tree stems, not human shoulders. He stumbled, fell, struggled to his feet again and ran, ran, ran.

Behind him rustling and something that clearly sounded like the increased breathing of a predator on the hunt.

Suddenly the trees gave way, the moonlight was back, a glade opened up in front of him.

Tommy fell again, but this time not because he had stumbled over something. The beast had caught up with him!

He blindly lashed out at where he assumed the predator's head was. Caustic pain in his left hand momentarily paralyzed him, then mobilized all his remaining strength. He wrested his hand free from the beast's jaw, rolled over, somehow made it to his feet again, wanted to start running once more… and they hit nothing.

Nothing.

The ground was not there.

He was falling, crashing down a hole.

Somehow he expected it to be a long fall, something that involved an echoing cry of his and some spinning and rushing of air in his ears, but instead his back hit soil in a split second. The hole was not deep. It didn't feel like he had broken a bone.

Whatever had attacked him, however, seemed to be regarding the hole as too abyssal for further pursuit. Its yellow eyes glowed at Tommy over the rim of the hole for a moment before it disappeared with a faint growl.

For a moment, he just lay on his back, breathing heavily. His left hand was bleeding profoundly and hurting as if it was on fire. Only then he noticed that the hole that had saved him was narrow and of rectangular shape.

He had fallen into an open grave.

Tom Sullivan was no one to lose his nerves easily, but now he started screaming. Screaming at the top of his lungs – and with a mighty jerk he was awake.

He was in his newly acquired apartment, in his bed, his body was covered in sweat, his boxer shorts were clinging to his skin as if he had taken a swim in them, but he was home, alive and well. His left hand, where Seth Boylan, the unfortunate rabies victim, had bitten him, was throbbing a little, according to Megan a normal occurrence in the course of the healing process, but that was it.

Just a nightmare. It had all just been a nightmare.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

"Are you okay, detective?" The young woman behind the counter of Tommy Sullivan's favorite coffee and donut shop seemed genuinely concerned.

"Didn't sleep much, that's all", he replied, voice still rather gravelly, hoping she'd assume he had spent the night hunting down criminals, not getting lost in some ridiculous nightmare, screaming his lungs out in his own bed.

A nightmare. Probably from that stupid advertisement clip he had seen.

Jeez, how old was he, five?

"You need vitamins", she decided and handed him a smoothie. Forest fruit flavored, of all things. "It's on the house."

Tommy looked at the smoothie, looked at her smiling face and just knew that she knew he was caught in a conflict. On the one hand he DESPERATELY wanted his morning coffee, on the other hand she had just made him a gift and rejecting it by asking for coffee nevertheless would have been grossly impolite.

It didn't help that she was pretty to look at and had that particular mischievous twinkle in her eyes Tommy always found hard to resist. He hadn't seen her before. She must have been newly hired.

"Who could say no to vitamins?", he smiled and took the smoothie.

… … …

Despite feeling uncomfortably metrosexual about it, Tommy even drank the ugly stuff as he stepped out on the street again. Ugh, slimy and sour was definitely not what he needed at the beginning of an unexpected weekend shift. A colleague had fallen sick and somehow his name had popped up as his substitute.

Now where could he get a decent cup of coffee if not here? Tough question. He wasn't that familiar with the neighborhood yet.

It wasn't just that the smoothie was way too healthy to serve as a proper start into the day. Megan had set up a case wrap up meeting with that annoying health commissioner this morning – before it had become clear that he would have to work that weekend.

Yeah, on his supposedly free Saturday morning she had set up a meeting with his new best buddy Charlie Stafford.

Her way of paying him back for the tow truck stunt.

There was no way he could face the sight of _Charlie_ without a reasonable dosage of caffeine running through his veins, so...

WHACK

SPLASH

Grabbing a streetlamp's post at the last minute was all that saved Tommy from stumbling off the sidewalk after a violent shove from a jogger. With the traffic that heavy he would have surely ended up as roadkill. A huge truck was passing him by, blowing his horn, just as he steadied himself again.

Jeez, the goddamn nightmare still had to be clinging to him, his reactions were way off. He hadn't even seen the young man coming. The headache that had set in after he had taken his morning shower wasn't helping either.

The jogger was in complete shock, apologized a million times – with his badge attached to his belt Tommy was easily identifiable as a cop and the bespectacled young man, judging from his age a college student, probably feared heavy retaliation.

Well yeah, considering that he had spilt coffee all over Tommy's left jacket sleeve and hand, his fear was not completely unfounded. Tommy had wanted coffee, yes, but enclosed in a nice plastic cup, not staining his clothes and burning his skin.

"You're drinking coffee and jogging at the same time? I should arrest you for endangering road safety!"

The college boy's eyes turned wide in horror of a dawning lawsuit and Tommy decided to just let go. The young man surely wouldn't be that careless again. Grumpily wiping his shirt dry as well as possible, Tommy headed to his car, deciding that the coffee from the vending machine at the coroner would have to do.

… … …

Not for the first time he had left his car in a narrow side street not far from the coffee and donut shop. Parking in Philly was hell. Spots were barely available and horrendously overpriced. The side street, though a little murky, had seemed like a gift from heaven to him. He'd never leave his vehicle there over night, but hey, this was early morning...

… which apparently hadn't kept a graffiti sprayer from adorning his driver's door with a semi-English swearword in huge letters. As he reached for the car's handle, some of the silvery color stuck to his fingers.

The hot coffee must have irritated the skin on the back of his left hand. It was smarting quite significantly. If he rubbed it, the sensation subsided, but the moment he stopped it was back again. Tommy sighed. Asking Megan for medical advice normally wasn't a bad thing, but not in the presence of Charlie Staff-fart.

This really didn't seem to be his day.

… … …

And his bad luck was holding.

"If Philadelphia PD had been a little more watchful, the lives of several young people could have been spared, not to mention those of unsuspecting transplant recipients Norman Chen and Seth Boylan, whose violent end should serve, if for nothing else, as a strong reminder that use of firearms in police context desperately needs to be reviewed and more strictly controlled." With a non-committing smile Health Commissioner Stafford closed the file in front of him and looked at his audience, consisting of Megan Hunt, Katherine Murphy and trigger-happy Officer Bad Ass himself.

"THAT'S what you're planning to write in your report?" Tommy was so fuming, he was barely able to remain sitting. Kate Murphy quickly put a hand on his arm.

"I'm not sure it's in the Health Commissioner's area of responsibility to discuss police procedures, neither regarding investigative work nor security measures", she said, resting her eyes for a brief moment on Stafford, then, with a frown, training them on Tommy's arm.

"That may well be, Dr. Murphy, but it definitely does fall in my area of responsibility to point out that Seth Boylan had been a very sick man who should have spent the last days of his life in a hospital, taken care of by professionals, with the best medication possible to ease his pain, instead of getting shot like a mad dog", the Health Commissioner smirked.

Megan sighed. This kind of stubborn insistence on being right was exactly what had made her and Doctor Stafford collide in the beginning and if Charlie didn't tread carefully here, within the next few minutes he and Tommy's fist would collide.

"YOU ARROGANT…"

_There we go_, Megan thought as Tommy jumped to his feet like a raging bull. This could only end badly. When would he ever learn to control his temper?

"Are you running a fever, Tom?", Kate asked at the same time, jumping up, too. "Your skin's practically burning…"

"Ugh…" The sudden movement had made him oddly dizzy. His vision swam.

"Everything okay with your hand?" Now Megan was on her feet, too. "It looks reddish."

Tommy opened his mouth to reply with something along the lines of _don't worry, everything is fine, _but all he managed was a guttural groan.

His world turned black.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

When Megan walked into Tommy's room at the hospital to her surprise he was not alone.

"Officer Dunn? What are you doing here?" Megan hadn't meant the question to sound harsh, but after almost two days without sleep her people skills had reached a new low.

"I tried contacting Tommy throughout the weekend. All my calls went straight to voicemail. I went to his apartment, nobody there… This morning talk at the precinct, he's down with rabies?"

Riley looked at his pale face. She still couldn't quite fathom how fast things had changed. They had given him some sort of sedative. He had fallen into uneasy sleep, bordering on the edge of consciousness, about two hours ago. His hand, the one that had gotten bitten, was moving restlessly over the bed sheet. The skin was horribly reddish.

This felt like someone had not only pulled the carpet from under her feet, no, the whole floor was gone. They had had a great time at the Flyers game and later drinks. She had invited him to her homemade lasagna, he had brought her home, all gentleman…

When he hadn't called her Saturday morning she had been upset. Had she interpreted more into the evening than it really had been? Had what she had read as interest in truth been simple politeness?

In the afternoon she hadn't been able to stand it anymore, she had texted him. Just some humorous remark regarding the hockey match, nothing that indicated how disappointed she was by his silence.

No reply.

She read and reread her message, wondering if she had sounded angry without noticing. But no, seriously, her message had been completely harmless.

Feeling like making a total fool of herself she had then tried calling him. First his cell, then figuring what the hell, she was already on the short list for stalker date of the year anyway, his landline… and when that proved in vain, his desk at the station.

Nothing.

When Sunday came and she was still without a word from him she had pulled her remaining courage together and made a trip to his doorstep.

Nada.

If she had only known whom to contact! But he was a detective, she was a simple uniform, she didn't know anyone from homicide she could ask just like that about Detective Sullivan's whereabouts.

And then Monday morning the devastating news. She had rushed here immediately and although it had been so early they had let her see him right away. Sometimes this uniform was useful after all.

Deep down she had known something had happened. Something bad.

"You should go back to the precinct, Officer. There's nothing you can do for him." Again Megan hadn't meant to sound harsh. But she had spent the past two days trying to figure out why the hell the vaccination hadn't worked, why Tommy was showing clear signs of the first phase of an acute rabies infection when she had given him the right shots in the right time window.

Hell, she had even sought out the laboratory where they had produced the stuff, had threatened them with withdrawal of their license, lawsuits and probably even burning brimstone raining from heaven, all to no avail. There was no explanation for his symptoms. It was noon of the third day after they had set in now and she knew all too well what that meant… Phase two was imminent.

"I'm using up overtime", Riley replied icily. "This is cleared with my captain. No need to worry about me taking time off at the expense of the city of Philadelphia, Dr. Hunt."

"He's soon going to display aggressive behavior, thrashing out or biting. He'll suffer from hallucinations and intense delusions. Excessive production of saliva is one of the trademark characteristics of the second phase of rabies… his temperature will go way up and he'll also be troubled with priapism, that means he'll…"

"I know very well what that mean, thank you very much! Will you stop now?", Riley all but snarled at her, fighting hard to keep her voice down.

"If you can't even stand me describing the symptoms to you, this is definitely not the place for you, Officer Dunn", Megan replied sternly.

"Not the place for _me_?" Riley jumped to her feet and huffed herself up in front of the other woman. Probably not the smartest thing to do, everyone knew Dr. Megan Hunt had contacts to people in high places and was of the revengeful kind, but enough was enough.

"I've been sitting here ever since seven this morning and no one, NO ONE in all these hours checked on him except the medical personnel. I asked about his visitors yesterday and the day before – nothing! Today is the first day you're spending more than five minutes here, Dr. Hunt! He's been alone all this time! Completely alone! And now that you're finally gracing him with your presence you've got nothing better to do than give him a preview of what he'll go through? Do you realize that he can probably still hear us?"

Megan took a deep breath. Heat from a uniform that had known Tommy for less than a week was the last thing she needed right now. How dare she? "The chances of him still being able to process what's happening around him are less than 10%. He was administered strong sedatives. Yes, I know, he looks like he could wake up any minute, but that's an illusion, produced by his body's growing agitation – a typical side effect of rabies…"

"SHUT UP!", Riley yelled at her. She immediately afterwards jerked at her own loud voice, for heaven's sake, what if she woke Tommy? – and forced herself to continue with a more chastened voice: "He trusted your judgment after he got bitten! He insisted on getting those shots from you! And now you're standing there talking about him like some failed experiment with a lab rat! Get the hell out of here!"

Part of Megan wanted to snarl back – she had never been one to take crap from anybody and wasn't going to start now – part of her felt as if Officer Dunn had just stabbed her with a knife – _He trusted you... _Just like the patient she had killed had trusted her…

Tommy stirred in his drug induced slumber, groaning painfully, drawing a deeply labored breath.

This couldn't be. This just couldn't be. After the disaster of her last operation she had sworn to herself never to fail someone like that ever again.

Fiercely determined to do something, anything, she exited the room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

Testing for rabies without brain tissue was difficult. Getting a reliable diagnosis from saliva, urine or cerebrospinal fluid samples was possible but not 100% certain. In Tommy's case the results had been inconclusive, just like the outcome of the examination of the piece of skin they had retrieved from his upper arm area.

But the symptoms spoke for themselves, didn't they?

Uttering a frustrated outcry, Megan grabbed the folder with Tommy's collected test results and smashed it against her office's wall, scattering them all over the floor. Only moments later, however, she got up and put them all back into place. There had to be something in them, something that helped her understand what was happening … and maybe also helped her to rescue Tommy.

His doctors had started treating him under the Milwaukee protocol ever since Saturday afternoon. That meant artificial coma along with dosages of ketamine, midazolam, ribavirin and amantadine. Temporary dysfunctions in the brain caused the detrimental effects of rabies. The idea behind the coma was to prevent brain damage by inducing a temporary partial halt in brain function, giving the immune system time to defeat the virus.

The Milwaukee protocol had been specifically developed for cases without successful post-exposure prophylaxis, such as Tommy's seemed to be, although she still didn't understand why the hell the vaccine shots hadn't worked.

Studies indicated a survival rate of about 8% if the Milwaukee protocol was followed carefully. Not an encouraging number to begin with… And so far it wasn't working at all.

Not only did the symptoms keep growing stronger, in addition to that Tommy, the tough bastard, was also somehow fighting the coma. He kept coming back to semi-consciousness… A phenomenon rare but not completely unknown in the field of anesthesia. Doctors from mental institutions could tell horrible stories about patients still walking around with dosages in them that by all known standards would have put an elephant to rest.

The strength of the human will was still an extremely insufficiently researched factor in medical treatment and Tommy's was definitely testing their only option to the limit right now.

The problem was that they needed to be careful with the level of coma they induced – if they made him sink too deep, they would probably never be able to wake him up again. So he was constantly bordering on the edge of consciousness, doing everything but relax. This way his immune system would never find enough strength to fight the virus.

Damn it, Tommy, why did you always have to be so stubborn?

As soft knock on the door made Megan look up. In walked Charlie Stafford.

"You should go to the hospital, Megan. You and I both know it's time to say good-bye."

He crossed the short distance to her desk, reached forward and slowly but firmly closed the folder with Tommy's results.

"It's time to accept the facts."

For a moment Megan contemplated biting his head off. Instead she opted for grabbing the folder and forcefully opening it again. "No! It isn't! He is still fighting!"

"It's just his instincts kicking in. Shows what kind of a person he was, always the hothead and never backing down from a challenge, I guess." Stafford smiled a sad, bitter smile.

"He's beyond being able to make the conscious decision to give up, Megan. But you aren't. You're a scientist. You believe in facts. It's all in those files you've read a million times."

"We don't have a definite test result yet", Megan snarled through clenched teeth. "The diagnosis is not 100% valid yet."

Without realizing it Charlie Stafford was in the process of committing one of the most cardinal sins you could with regards to Megan Hunt. There were lots and lots of things she found annoying in other people, but pretty much nothing sent her faster through the roof then attempts at patronizing her.

_On the other hand_, a tiny voice inside her head pointed out, _if this was not Tommy but any other patient, you'd tell the near and dear ones pretty much the same: Accept the facts, stop torturing yourself, say good-bye. _

Hell, she had said good-bye to Tommy twenty years ago, hadn't she? So why was this so damn difficult?

"We'll have a definite test result in less than twenty-four hours", Charlie said softly. "As soon as we get a sample of the brain…"

She didn't want to hear it. Almost desperately she interrupted him. "It's all too fast… his digression… he was bitten less than a week ago. Usually the period between infection and first symptoms is two to twelve weeks…"

"But cases are known with incubation periods as short as four days. You are right, though, some aspects of his progress of disease are atypical and require further examination. I've gotten the papers ready this morning…" Charlie's voice sounded neutral, except for the tiniest quiver of insecurity. This was probably not the best moment to tell her, but he had to tell her at some point...

"What do you mean, _papers_?" Megan's voice turned sharp like one of her scalpels.

"I'll seize Detective Sullivan's body once he has passed away. For more tests that can't be done while the fomite is still alive."

"YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS! NO WAY YOU'RE GOING TO TURN HIM INTO AN OBJECT OF RESEARCH!"

It was a good thing none of Megan's scalpels was within her reach.

"You, of all people, a renowned scientist, should know that personal attachments mustn't get in the way of research. The virus might have mutated when Boyden passed it on to Sullivan. Burying him would mean willingly missing out on the chance to research what one day could threat more people – people that could be rescued with the help of results stemming from the dead body you so irrationally want to protect."

Stafford's voice was still very steady, very calm. He hated having to talk like that to someone he cared a great deal about, but Megan was on the verge of losing her mind over this. He considered herself her friend and as her friend he saw it as his duty to keep her in contact with reality.

"Go to the hospital, Megan, and say good-bye. Stop wasting your time looking for something that just isn't there."

How often had she told relatives of patients exactly that back in her neurosurgeon days?

For a moment Megan just looked at Charlie. Then she slowly, very slowly, sat down again behind her desk. She closed Tommy's file. Charlie cautiously reached out, touched her shoulder, squeezed it briefly in a gesture of commiseration and then – knowing she needed a bit of time to come clean with her feelings – walked away.

The silence in the office, once Charlie was gone, was almost palpable. _Stop wasting your time looking for something that just isn't there._ His words seemed to be reverberating in the air.

He was right. Megan reached out to switch off her computer.

_Stop wasting your time looking for something that just isn't there._

_Something that just isn't there._

_Not there…_

JEEZ!

Megan hectically opened the file again, flipped through the pages, found the sheet she had been looking for, accessed the respective folder on her computer… she wasn't imagining this.

Something just wasn't there. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

Riley wasn't exactly pleased when Megan Hunt reappeared in Tommy's hospital room and made a beeline for his left hand.

"Taking a look at your property?", she hissed.

"Your accusatory tone in itself is not bad, it'll come in handy once you're trying to climb up the greasy pole, _Officer _Dunn, but you should work on the logical coherence of your statements. What you just said doesn't make any sense at all." Without looking at the other woman, Megan cautiously began to peel away the bandage from Tommy's bite wound. No easy task since he unconsciously kept trying to move his hand, wringing it, restlessly rubbing it against the bed sheet.

The skin around the wound, as far as she had been able to see with the gauze applied, was deeply reddish and indicated infection, a typical sign of rabies. But…

"I overheard the nurses. That health inspector wants to seize Tommy's body for further research. Was that your idea?" Riley's voice was dripping with contempt.

"Dr. Stafford's intentions are completely valid from a scientist's point of view. Research can never be a bad thing…" Part of Megan wanted to add _you shouldn't judge what you, with all due respect, Officer Dunn, are barely able to understand_ but then all thoughts in that direction were wiped away as the removal of Tommy's bandage revealed what she had been hoping for. The wound margins!

The brief flicker of a smile that had flashed across her face hadn't escaped Riley's notice. "What is it? Did you find something?" Her tone was now completely different, hopeful, desperate for some sort of encouraging news.

Megan couldn't help but give an appreciative nod, though only inwardly. Not bad. That officer was an acute observer. "This movement with his hand, does he do that all the time? While he's unconscious?"

"What did you find?", Riley repeated, getting all fired up again. What was that woman thinking, waltzing in here, making haughty remarks, treating her like one of her minions? She wanted to know what was going on, for heaven's sake! If Hunt had found something, ANYTHING that could somehow help Tommy, she needed to know!

Megan felt ready to explode, too. Tommy's life was on the line and that stupid cop had nothing better to do than questioning her instead of being helpful and answer her questions! The thing with the hand was important, goddamn it!

Both women stared at each other like boxers for a promo shot.

Then Tommy produced a painful, labored moan in his drug-induced slumber.

Both women at the same time, without realizing it, shared one thought: This was about Tommy, not about reigning supreme.

"C-reactive protein is a protein found in the blood; its percentage proportion rises in response to inflammation. Acute infection of the bite wound is a classical symptom in the prodromal stage of rabies. Tommy's CRP level should be sky high. It isn't. All the other indicators match the diagnosis, but that one is just not there. The blood work shows no increased CRP level at all", Megan said through clenched teeth.

"So you came here to see the wound to determine if it's really infected…", Riley slowly continued.

"Or if we got tricked into seeing what we feared we would see…", Megan nodded. "We let the other symptoms, the fever and the coordination problems, influence us. We didn't take into consideration the constant rubbing Tommy exposed his skin to… I figured it could very well have caused oversensitivity… and the way I read the wound, this is exactly what happened. The skin is irritated from the outside, not inflamed from the inside."

"I think he had a bad dream about gotten bitten. He kept mumbling about a movie and a nightmare before they gave him more sedatives", Riley said. "Whenever he mentioned that movie he moved his hand more. Seems to have deeply disturbed him. Maybe it got into his head so much that this rubbing thing became some sort of a tic for him."

"Nightmare from a movie?" Megan shook her head dismissively. "That's not like Tommy at all."

"But that's what he said." Riley's voice was tinged with anger again.

"I've known Tommy for twenty years and he never…", Megan scoffed.

"You've known him twenty years _ago_", Riley snapped back.

So much for lacking logical coherence of Riley Dunn's statements. As much as Megan hated to admit it, the young officer had a point.

"I need to see the movie that made _Tommy Sullivan_ have a nightmare", she said, turned around and was ready to exit the room when a rather softly asked question stopped her again:

"So you have a key to his apartment?"

No, actually she didn't. She was tempted to tell Riley Dunn otherwise, though, but the officer had already guessed the answer from her body language … and was visibly relieved.

"How do you plan to get in then?", Riley asked. "His personal belongings are in the hospital's safe and you're no relative, they won't just give you the keys because you ask for them."

Again, Megan had to admit, the woman had a point.

"Tommy once told me every good cop knows how to pick a lock…" Megan let the sentence trail off, hoping it was enough of a request.

Riley contemplated replying something bitchy like _Oh, suddenly you need the dumb cop's help?_ but again, this was about Tommy, not about reigning supreme.

So she simply nodded and followed Megan out of the room.

In the split second Megan opened the door she looked back at Tommy once more… his incredibly pale face, the sunken cheeks, his labored breath… even in his comatose state he was restlessly moving his hand, rubbing it against the cloth of the hospital bed's sheet.

Twenty years she had refused to see him…

She wasn't one to think in terms of fate, but there was a sense of irony to her starting to talk to him again after two decades… only to probably lose him forever.

Riley looked back at Tommy, too. She really liked that man. Would she get the chance to get to know him better?


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

"I'm sure there must be a more effective way of doing this." Brows furrowed in suspicion, Megan eyed Riley fiddling with the lock on Tommy's door.

"There's definitely a more effective way of keeping a lookout. What about actually staying with your eyes on the entrance to the stairway? And maybe you should be quiet, too, or we won't hear the elevator", Riley grumbled through clenched teeth. "Remember our backup story?"

"If you were actually capable of doing what you claimed you could do, we wouldn't need…"

"We're here to water the plants", Riley interrupted Megan.

"I did remember that!"

With a soft click Tommy Sullivan's door swung open and ended further argument.

For the moment.

Megan had read up a little on psychogenic pain, also known as psychalgia, once she had discovered that the skin on the back of Tommy's hand was irritated from constant rubbing and scratching, not inflamed from infection. Psychalgia was defined as physical pain that could be caused, increased or prolonged by mental, emotional and behavioral factors. It could manifest itself in all sorts of varieties, from sharp, searing sensations to a burning or, rarely, itching feeling, which was what Tommy probably had been experiencing.

There was also no body part exempt from becoming the location of somatoform pain disorders, both inward and outward. Headache, back pain or stomach pain were the most common types of psychogenic pain, but it was entirely possible that the bite wound on the back of Tommy's hand was at the root of all his current symptoms, not in the form of a rabies infection but as a heavy psychological reaction to the deeply traumatic event of getting attacked by a human being behaving like a zombie.

Granted, the seriousness of his symptoms, headache, fever, coordination problems, fainting etc. accompanied by matching blood test results was odd, especially since Tommy had never struck Megan as someone especially prone to psychosomatic reactions, but, as Officer Dunn had pointed out so unabashedly, she hadn't talked to him in twenty years, so how could she tell how much he had changed?

Causes of psychogenic pain outbreaks could be linked to stress. Megan had the feeling Tommy hadn't left New York under the best of circumstances. There was something about his face every time his old assignment was mentioned… some shadow, a brief darkening of the eyes… Maybe he had experienced some sort of traumatic event there, a crime victim he hadn't been able to protect or something in that direction, and had chosen to flee instead of facing his feelings…

Now _that _sounded totally like Tommy Sullivan.

Then he had encountered zombie Boylan here in Philly and off his body had gone on a rampage mimicking a rabies outbreak to finally force him to deal with his inner demons. The reaction was extreme, yes, but the human body could act like that. Pseudocyesis, most commonly known as false pregnancy, was a paramount example for the power the mind could have over the body: The affected women's abdomen expanded in the same manner as it would have during real pregnancy, gastrointestinal symptoms showed up, breast changes or secretions could be detected, uterine enlargement, softening of the cervix… a small percentage of the women even experienced false labor after nine months.

Maybe that movie that Tommy kept mentioning had somehow triggered his body's fierce reaction. If they found that movie a good psychologist would probably be able to use it as a basis to get him back to the land of the living.

"His PC is password protected", Riley mumbled, studying the small login window that unfortunately didn't even give away how long the requested word was supposed to be.

"Maybe he thinks he's extra smart", she said and typed in "PASSWORD".

Red writing appeared above the window. Invalid login.

Riley pursed her lips. "At the Flyers game he mentioned that his favorite New York ice hockey team is the Islanders." She typed in "ISLANDERS".

More red writing. And also the helpful information that if a third wrong password was entered the whole computer would go into lockdown status.

"Let me try", Megan said, ushering Riley away from her seat, making her stand up, completely ignoring the harrumphing noises the other woman made and her huffed body language. Sitting down she looked at the computer screen for a moment with her fingers hovering above the keyboard, then she figured what the hell…

She typed "MEGAN".

Tommy's desktop appeared.

Riley bit her lips. She had known it all along, but having it shoved in her face how attached Tommy Sullivan still was to Dr. Hunt was hard to take. Trying to hide the onslaught of disappointment and jealousy she was going through, she reached for the pile of paper next to the keyboard and skipped through the various items.

"There's nothing here", Megan frowned, checking Tommy's folders once more. "No downloads at all."

"Maybe because he didn't download the movie." Riley showed Megan an empty envelope. "This advertising letter is from some B-movie DVD release company, they sent out snippets from their newest product as teasers… let's take a look at the DVD player!" And off she dashed towards what looked like Tommy's living-room, envelope firmly in her hand, determined not to let Megan beat her again.

Megan, on the other hand, couldn't have cared less about who made it to the device first, as long as they finally found that goddamn movie… and this time they were lucky: The DVD from the movie company was still inserted and ready to be watched.

_A vast forest in the dead of night. _

_Dim moonlight seeping through the treetops. _

_Deafening silence. _

"Looks like someone reached deep into the dusty archives of Hollywood's most deservedly forgotten horror movie stereotypes…", Megan commented.

_The moonlight disappears. Almost complete blackness fills the screen. _

"Maybe they couldn't afford proper lighting. Judging from the quality of this they can't have worked on a terribly high budget…" Megan shook her head.

_A rustling sound, gradually growing louder. _

_Giant yellow eyes glowing in the dark._

Megan rolled hers.

_Loud, heavy breathing. _

She rolled them some more.

_Giant, pointed teeth, gleaming in the now conveniently reappeared moonlight. _

Megan snorted.

_A fall and a grave. _

Oh, please.

"This is almost ridiculously badly made. It just can't have affected Tommy that deeply. We've been wasting our time." Megan angrily reached for the remote control to switch everything off.

"Hang on a sec", Riley said. "Didn't you notice?"

Questioning glance from Megan.

"You were so busy with being appalled by what you regarded as an insult to your intelligence, you didn't see it!" Riley was almost laughing in triumph now, the disappointment over the password thing rapidly subsiding. "Look here!" She put the DVD player in single frame mode.

"What the…?"

Flabbergasted, Megan could do nothing but stare at the screen for a moment.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

"This is just so cool!", Ethan blurted out. "The clip was taken from the 1972 movie _Night of the Undead Wolves_ – little known outside avid followers of the genre, unfortunately. It only ever came out on video. Fans have been waiting for a legal DVD release for ages now. This clip shows that it could really be worth the effort. Just look at the way the fangs gleam in the…"

"Ethan!", Curtis thundered. "That's not the point."

"Thank you, Curtis." Megan activated the single frame mode.

For a moment they all – Kate, Curtis, Ethan and Charlie Stafford – watched with the same utter astonishment that had taken hold of Riley and Megan back in Tommy's apartment.

Finally Ethan again: "Now THIS is supercool."

Curtis rolled his eyes. "You know what you'll get from me next Christmas? A thesaurus!" Then he turned his attention to Riley, shaking his head in disbelief. "How in the world did you notice? These subliminal messages inserted into the clip can't last longer than three milliseconds each."

"While watching I noticed that the blackness of the night randomly changed", Riley explained, letting the clip run in very slow motion. Even at that ultra-low rate the images of giant pointed teeth digging deep into a human hand that someone had put in the movie teaser were barely perceptible. "At first I thought it was just bad lighting, but the phenomenon occurred in the middle of scenes, not in accordance with the scene cuts. Then I remembered something I had learned at college… spent a year at an AICAD school before settling for a law enforcement career. I realized I was dealing with afterimages." Rubbing her forehead, Riley leaned back against the desk in Kate Murphy's office, where they had gathered to watch the clip.

"After each inserted picture the darkness of the regular movie clip for a tiny moment looks brighter because the light sensitive photoreceptors in the retina still respond to the brightness of the fangs-biting-hand images", Megan added, inwardly shaking her head at the young cop using Kate's desk as a chair. The girl seriously needed to brush up on her manners. "It's basically the same phenomenon that occurs when you briefly look at the sun and then away again: The bright glow of the sun seems to continue floating before your eyes for a moment. The same effect made the Night of the Zombie Wolves look brighter at times."

"Undead…undead wolves", Ethan burst out, and he probably would have added: _Movie titles are important! You wouldn't call Van Gogh's Sunflowers "Yellow Flowers" either, would you?"_ but a strict look from Curtis stopped him just in time.

Megan's retort probably would have been devastating.

"It's the same image repeated over and over again – a hand getting bitten", Kate mused, ignoring Ethan. "No surprise Tommy Sullivan developed psychosomatic symptoms after viewing this. First the attack by Seth Boylan, then this movie with the subliminal messages… this is very cleverly done… it's based on what happened to him, emphasizes and exaggerates it… someone was targeting specifically him, wanted to make him develop problems…" Part of Kate saw herself explaining this on TV, in the context of a prime time news feature – this case had the potential of bringing in very good publicity for the Medical Examiner's office.

"We need a competent psychologist. Maybe someone with military experience? I've googled it… The military has been making use of subliminal messages ever since World War II… They should have people specializing in this", Riley suggested, her voice trembling. She was still leaning against Kate's desk, heavens, almost sitting on it by now, totally oblivious of the higher ranking woman's disapproving frown.

"We need to nail the bastard who sent Tommy this", Megan growled. In her book messing with a person's mind was an unforgivable sin. There were nights she was lying awake wondering if someone had messed with her father's mind, somehow pushed him into suicide with psychological tricks like that.

Just then a very calm, very rational male voice spoke up. "I don't buy it."

They all looked around. In between studying the manipulated teaser trailer and discussing its implications, Charlie Stafford's uncharacteristic silence had gone pretty much unnoticed.

"What do you mean?", Megan asked, frowning.

"Your theory has holes", Charlie stated matter-of-factly.

Ethan and Curtis exchanged wide-eyed glances. Usually people who challenged Dr. Hunt like that were well-advised to utter their objections and then duck and cover… under something very solid… or make a run for the hills.

FAST.

Dr. Stafford, however, had never hesitated letting Megan know what he thought about her conclusions, both in the positive and in the negative sense. Apparently he was not going to start now, be it her friend's life on the line or not.

"Would you care specifying your points of critique, Charlie?", Megan all but snarled.

"I think you're clutching at any straw here. Your… _acquaintanceship_… with Detective Sullivan is clouding your judgment. Yes, it might very well be that someone tried to play a prank at the detective's expense, tried to scare him with the manipulated clip, but there's no reason to assume his distinct symptoms of rabies and the video are connected. Be a scientist, Megan, and look at the results of his blood tests. Yes, granted, the CRP level is atypical, but all the other data points directly in one direction and one direction only. It's a rabies infection and Thomas Sullivan is dying of it. You're wasting your time." Stafford spoke the last sentence with great emphasis. If Megan didn't finally accept the facts she'd miss out on the opportunity to say good-bye to her friend.

"Don't you think it a tiny bit suspicious that Tommy's symptoms and the video show up at exactly the same time?" Megan was barely able to keep her voice down.

Charlie Stafford sighed. "You know just as well as I do that human beings tend to create patterns. It's a common psychological phenomenon that helps people to organize their environment: The stovetop looks reddish, when you touch it, you get burnt – human thinking creates a connection between the two elements and next time you won't touch the stove. Of course this leads to lots of false connections, too: A black cat crosses the street, the onlooker trips over a stone. Again human thinking relates the two elements with each other although this time they're objectively not related. Next time a black cat appears, the onlooker gets scared. You're making the same mistake here, Megan. You're linking two events that don't have anything to do with each other."

"Ugh…" Riley had fought the strange feeling of dizziness that she had started experiencing back in the car with Dr. Hunt on their way to the Medical Examiner's office as long as she could, but now she was losing control. Her knees gave way and she crashed to the ground, unable to cushion her fall.

"Officer Dunn?" Megan was by her side immediately, kneeled down next to her shoulders and reached out to touch Riley's forehead.

"She's got fever!", she gasped.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I don't own Body of Proof and intend no copyright infringement. **

"She's showing exactly the same symptoms as Tommy", Megan said, watching Riley stir in an uneasy sleep. "But not on the same level of intensity. It's all there, the fever, the pain, the fainting, the hallucinations… but somewhat reduced…"

"And she definitely didn't get bitten or otherwise in contact with a rabies vector…" Deeply frowning, Charlie Stafford looked at the reading from the monitor beside the officer's bed again. He was finding himself in an unusual situation: This all didn't add up. Nothing made sense. He saw himself forced to make a, for him, very rare admission…

"We were both wrong. This can neither be caused by the movie nor can it be rabies. The movie was specifically designed to trouble Detective Sullivan. I don't see that Officer Dunn should be affected by it in any way, especially since she was the one to uncover the manipulation with the inserted subliminal messages. And since it would be a hell of a coincidence if she infected herself with rabies independently from the Boylan case…"

"It's got to be something else…", Megan finished his sentence. For a long moment, both she and Charlie Stafford could do nothing but stare at the officer's sleeping form. Kate, meanwhile, took a long look at the both of them. It was truly a sight to behold: Renowned experts in their respective field but completely clueless. She almost felt the urge to pull out her mobile phone and make a picture of the two of them, to preserve this moment for eternity. If only Detective Sullivan's life hadn't been on the line…

Kate furrowed her eyebrows and mentally repeated her last thought. Tommy Sullivan's life was on the line, yes… Officer Riley was sick, but all in all her condition was stable…

This should tell her something, she was sure… but she couldn't quite lay a finger on it.

A doctor from the hospital came in with Officer Riley's newest test results. Both Megan Hunt and Charlie Stafford all but lunged for them, like drowning people for a lifeline… Well, to two proud scientists who never missed out on an opportunity to stress the importance of FACTS in contrast to instinct or, even worse, "gut feeling", the test results probably were exactly that: Lifelines that hopefully would serve to drag them out of this uncomfortable sea of confusion and cluelessness.

Megan, predictably, won the struggle for the result sheet and got to look first. "Now this is interesting…"

She looked at Riley, looked at the results again and finally shook her head… "We've made a mistake…"

Slowly losing her patience, Kate rolled her eyes: "You already came to this conclusion about five minutes ago. What do the test results say?"

"We should have worn gloves…", Megan said and handed the result sheet to Charlie Stafford.

"D-lysergic acid amide, Scopolamine, Salvinorin A and Dimethyltryptamine… all in semi-synthetic form… whoa, quite the cocktail… and in that mixture definitely sufficient to mimic symptoms of rabies…" Charlie looked at Megan. "She and Tommy were poisoned?"

"Contact poison", Megan nodded. "On the envelope that was used to send Tommy the DVD with the movie clip. Officer Dunn touched it while we were at his apartment."

"You didn't wear gloves? How could you be so careless?" Stafford stared at Megan in utter disbelief.

Megan knew he was right… and quite frankly, looking at it now, she didn't understand herself either. What had she been thinking?

Well, maybe her mind had been preoccupied with worry for a certain police detective, but she'd definitely rather bite her tongue off than admit it…

"At least now we know what really happened. Poison and movie clip in combination threw Tommy into the state he's in now", Megan stated firmly. "Him reacting so strangely to the attempts to put him into artificial coma had nothing to do with his strong will… D-lysergic acid amide and narcotics neutralize each other…"

Kate, meanwhile, had a light bulb moment of her own. Suddenly what had only vaguely appeared at the rim of her consciousness when she had contemplated Officer Dunn's and Detective Sullivan's differing conditions was now clear as day. "And the fact that none of those drugs showed up in Tommy Sullivan's rest results, in addition to his state still getting worse from hour to hour can only mean one thing…"

All of a sudden the door to Riley's hospital room was torn open.

"Please tell me it's not rabies!" Detective Adam Lucas, finally back from his bachelor party weekend, came rushing in.

"Tell me there's someone responsible for Tommy's and Riley's state, someone I can arrest and get punished, not some virus."

Megan looked at the young detective and broke into a smile, for what felt like the first time in days. "Your wish is our command, detective."

… … …

The nurse entered Tommy's hospital room like all the other nurses that came and went to check on this intensive care patient. She took a look at the readings of the monitor by his bedside, just like all the other nurses. She changed the drip infusion… just like all the other nurses, but, if Megan was not mistaken, the drip infusion itself was everything but like all the others… it most likely contained a highly dangerous mixture of semi-synthetic D-lysergic acid amide, Scopolamine, Salvinorin A and Dimethyltryptamine.

Adam Lucas stopped the nurse right before she actually connected Tommy with the drug cocktail.

"I'm just doing my job", she hissed at them as Detective Lucas read her her rights.

"Your _job_?", Megan Hunt all but laughed at her. "We lifted your fingerprints off the last drip infusion you smuggled in here… and according to that you're working down in the hospital's lab. But of course it was no problem for you to dress up as a nurse. You knew your way around here and took your time to poison Detective Sullivan with higher and higher dosages – the one on the envelope was just for starters, to get him here. You didn't know about Officer Riley's accidental contact with the envelope, otherwise you'd probably started doing the same with her... And down in the lab you manipulated Detective Sullivan's test results so that the drugs went by unnoticed. Pity you forgot to insert a faux C-reactive protein level…"

The fake nurse clenched her teeth. Damn, such a minor mistake…

"This only leaves one question… why?", Adam Lucas asked her.

"Seth Boylan was my brother. He was sick. And that bastard of a detective shot him like a stray dog. I wanted to make him pay!"

Charlie Stafford's gaze followed the fake nurse for a long time as Adam Lucas led her away in handcuffs. He remembered well his own words regarding Tommy Sullivan and his handgun use in the Boylan case… well, the detective had paid quite dearly for it, hadn't he? He decided he wouldn't question Sullivan's actions in his report after all.

"How is he doing?", just then a soft voice asked from the door that Adam Lucas and the fake nurse had left open. Officer Riley, in a wheel chair and hospital clothes.

"Ugh, what in the world…?" Tommy Sullivan himself answered Riley's question. Squinting his eyes, he looked around in confusion.

"You were quite sick, but now you're on the mend…", Megan told him, suddenly somewhat feeling lost in the situation, torn between relief that Tommy was going to be okay and… something else…

"But you still need a lot of rest. Like we all do. Come on, Megan, I'll give you a ride. It was a long three days…" Charlie Stafford gently but firmly took Megan by the arm and started leading her out of the room.

Riley rolled past her in her wheelchair, eyes completely on Tommy. She couldn't wait getting to his bedside, almost knocked the heart monitor over.

At the threshold Megan looked back once more at him. She told her she only wanted to see that her efforts had been fruitful, that she had had the right instinct, that she had solved another case. Tommy living after all was proof to her cleverness, looking at him was about enjoying her triumph, nothing more.

He was looking back at her. His eyes were clear now, he wasn't confused anymore and what she saw wasn't simply gratefulness.

Charlie Stafford tugged at her arm, urging her on.

Riley reached for Tommy's hand and with a deep intake of air that almost sounded like a sigh, Tommy turned his attention to her.

**THE END**


End file.
